The hybrid warfare unleashed against Russia is fraught with the potential to develop into a conflict between nuclear powers, said Igor Vishnevetsky, deputy director of the Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
"A hybrid military campaign has been unleashed against Russia, which is forced to defend its legitimate right to ensure its fundamental security interests, fraught with slipping into a direct conflict between nuclear powers," Vishnevetsky said at the conference on Tuesday.
Thus, Vishnevetsky noted, Russia believes that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be started.
"We believe that a nuclear war cannot be won, and it must never be fought. And we stand for equal and indivisible security for all members of the global community," the diplomat said.
The situation in the field of strategic stability is rapidly deteriorating, and NATO's malicious activity has caused a crisis in the middle of Europe, Vishnevetsky pointed out in his speech.
"A gross violation of the principle of equal and indivisible security as a result of the harmful expansion of the military bloc of countries claiming undivided military-strategic and geopolitical dominance provoked an acute crisis in the middle of Europe," he stated.
Vishnevetsky claimed that Washington has devalued the positive developments in the negotiations on strategic stability.
"Russia continues to fulfill its obligations under the START Treaty of 2010. On our initiative, in February 2021, it was extended for 5 years, and in July 2021, by agreement of the presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States, a comprehensive dialogue on [strategic stability] was initiated," Vishnevetsky said.
However, he added, "the positive developments were devalued by the US policy of ignoring Russia's red lines in the field of security."
"Washington used our rebuff to the destructive course as a pretext for freezing the strategic dialogue," the diplomat explained.
Reacting to the statements of some countries about Russian aggression against Ukraine and the special military operation conducted by Moscow, Vishnevetsky rejected all accusations of unfounded aggression.
"We would like to resolutely reject all accusations against us of unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. The regime now ruling in Kiev came to power as a result of a coup d'état and immediately began persecution and then an armed conflict against the Russian-speaking population of Donbass," Vishnevetsky said.
He reminded those at the conference that the Kiev authorities, having signed the Minsk agreements, were not ever going to fulfill them.
"The situation in Ukraine has reached its limit, and Russia's actions have become a forced response to the atrocities that took place there, and they will be brought to their logical end," he asserted.
He promised to give a detailed Russian response to insinuations about alleged threats with nuclear weapons and actions aimed at undermining nuclear security in Ukraine.
Further, Russian envoy to the conference Alexander Trofimov stressed that given the aforementioned situation, Russia strictly followed the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine security in exchange for its nuclear weapons, and said that accusations against Russia of intentions to use nuclear weapons are unscrupulous.
"Russia has strictly fulfilled its obligations. Among them is the obligation not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. It is being carried out in relation to Ukraine in full, including in recent months," Trofimov said.
He concluded by saying that none of the scenarios of the possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia is applicable in the situation in Ukraine.
"Russian doctrinal guidelines on this issue are well known and extremely clear. We hypothetically allow a nuclear response only in response to aggression using WMD or in response to aggression using conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened. None of these hypothetical scenarios has anything to do with the situation in Ukraine," he underscored.